On Sunday I visited Cracow, it wasn’t my first time there but it was my first time visiting. I spent 2 nights and only 1 day (I arrived on the evening and left on Tuesday in the morning!)

Krakow is a very interesting city and with a lot of History – which I didn’t know before – plus it’s beautiful.

I had short time to visit so I decided to go on a Free Tour to get to know the city better. I totally reccommend it. I loved it so I went on the afternoon tour to Kazimierz (Jewish Quarter) too. As you can imagine by its name, the tour is for free. You only pay a tip to the guide when the tour is finished, you are not obligated to but it would be super nice as they don’t have any salary.

We started the tour on the Main Market Square with a little introduction about Cracow’s History, Middle Ages till the modern times. One of the things I found very interesting was the fact that the Nazis picked Cracow as their administrative city outside Germany (after conquer Poland). And one of the reasons they did that was because the Old Town was built as the medieval German standars. This will also explain why they destroyed 95% of Warsaw and did nothing to Cracow. (Too much History in a few sentences!)

The tour is quite interesting, complete and perfect if you want to learn more about the city and the Cracovian History.

Here is a list about some places we visited and I liked the most:

St. Mary’s Church

Medieval city walls

Florianska Street

The Main Market Square

Grodzka Street

The Wawel Castle

We stopped to have a hot drink as it was too cold to keep walking which I think is cool because we went to a cuban bar with Latin music, perfect!

Also during the tour, Diego, the guide, reccommed us places where to eat or to have drinks. He doesn’t get any commission for talking about this places, so it’s his personal reccommendation.

Again we started from St. Mary’s Church and we walk around 15 minutes before we arrived to our first stop in Kazimierz. We had a little introduction about Polish-Jew History through the years.

This tour is very different from the 1st. Is more about the information the guide gives you than the spots you visit. Is more about the -real- stories about Cracovian citizens and about the sad and horrible reality the Jewish people lived in this city.

As I said before the tour started in the Jewish Quarter of Kazimier, later on we visited Podgórze where the Ghetto was and where thousand of people lived in terrible conditions.

During the first part of the tour we visit different Synagogues, some monuments in memory of the victims, Jewish cementery (you need to pay an entrance, but there is a window where you can see and take a look inside) and we also walked through some spots where the famous film Schindler’s List was shot.

Not everything on the tour was sad. Kazimierz is the cool quarter of Cracow, a lot of pubs and live night life, perfect to have fun on a Cracovian night out. During our break to have a hot drink as it was too cold outside, we went to a unique and quite original pub called Alquimia where it’s allowed to smoke inside. If you go to Cracow make sure to go there, you will love it! They even have concerts.

After the break it was time to go to Podgórze where the old Ghetto was. The Nazis created this place in the 1941 and obligated the Jewish to move and live there and even that the capacity was for 3 thousand people, there were around 15 thousand. We visited one of the remaining walls (a part of it) of the Ghetto. Not too high and the top part has the shape like Jewish gravestones which proves that Nazis were also phychological abusing them.

Last stop was the Ghetto Heroes Square. This square was the main point of the Ghetto and were the Nazis decided the future of the Jews. Roman Polanski, who lived in the Ghetto for a couple of months and could escape when he was only 8 years old, was behind the chairs monument that is in the square. The chairs represents all the women, men and childs that were on the square with all their belongings and sat on the chairs that they brought, waiting for the Nazis to decided what will happen with their lives. Next to the square was located the only pharmacy of the ghetto, his owner helped a lot of Jews, nowadays it’s a museum.

It’s hard to pick between the tours as they are different but interesting so, I would reccommend to do the two of them. If you go a couple of days don’t do both on the same day as I did, it will be better to go on different days 🙂

Cracow was as great as I expected, I wanted to visit this city for a long time and I can reccommend it to everyone who loves History, architecture and for those who wants to enjoy a city that offer a lot to do and to discover. You can walk trhough the entire city but still there is a tram so you can reach everywhere plus is not expensive.